ABSTRACT
Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta introduced blockchain in 1991 but real utilization of this technology came in view during the year 2008 in the form of cryptocurrency application by Santoshi Nakamoto. To foster digital trust, blockchain technology plays a vital role. At the early stage, this technology was used for financial transactions only. In application areas where we found the need for data storage, blockchain will add value. Blockchain technology adds verified data by the user in the form of uneditable blocks. These blocks are of fixed size structures that keep on adding in the chronological order to form public ledger in the network. Decentralized, distributed working, robustness, and auditable registry of all the transactions make this technology trustworthy and popular. This encourages utilization of blockchain technology worldwide. It supports to improve the performance and reliability of various business transactions. This chapter focuses on working of blockchain technology along with its applications. Financial applications – blockchain provides traceability and transparency to the financial transactions, which makes it as unique technology to take care of financial applications. Financial applications in the area of banking services, insurance sectors such as health insurance, economic business applications, financial auditing, cryptocurrency payment and exchange are the part of discussion. Non-financial applications like health care – in which blockchain technology helps stakeholders to maintain and share patient records with stakeholders in secure way. Governance – blockchain technology can be turned as path changer for the local and central government to take care of governance. This will help in fixing accountability, for providing automation, and safety to the various governance transactions, which ultimately support to overcome corruption. Business and industrial applications – in the area of business and industry applications, blockchain will improve credibility of the business transactions. Blockchain technology will provide visibility, optimization, and demand across the supply chain management in effective way. These are the certain areas under consideration to discuss as part of blockchain applications.
